While commuting from one office to another it was not unusual for me to stop at a fast food place for fries or chicken nuggets to munch for the drive. When filling my car I would get a bag of chips and soda pop and/or a candy bar with a frozen Coke. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Judging by the line at the cash register, these habits were not unique to me.
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, obesity related diseases add an extra $190,000,000,000.00 per year to the cost of health care in the United States. That's 190 BILLION dollars that we all pay for through rising insurance premiums, government insurance programs and out of pocket expenses. By comparison, the estimated cost of fixing all of the crumbling roads in Michigan per year is 1.8 Billion dollars. This is money that could be funneled into our financially strapped public schools or used to replace the pipes that leach lead into the drinking water of Flint and so many other US cities. That's PER YEAR!!!
The number $190 billion is just a number. It is far beyond my ability to comprehend anything that enormous. In perspective, at a cost of $71,000.00 for heart bypass surgery with no complications, that is enough to pay for 2,676,056 operations. (In the U.S. 500,000 bypasses are done per year)
An interesting fact about heart bypass is that 4 percent of these patients do not survive the operation. That is 20,000 deaths per year that need not happen. It need not happen because heart disease is essentially a foodborne illness. We can choose to not fall victim to it by improving our food choices.
Cardiovascular disease including stroke is responsible for 787,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone and 17,300,000 globally. Again, numbers too large to understand. What I do understand is that almost 50% of the time the first symptom of Cardiovascular Disease is sudden death. Do not try to take comfort in the notion that you can eat and drink whatever you like and when it eventually causes heart problems a pill and bypass surgery will be the answer. You are flipping a coin where one side is risky and the other is sudden death.
"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food". A quote from Hippocrates 2400 years ago. Take the time to learn about healthy eating. Find out about the simple changes you can make now to avoid heart disease. This is not a new concept.
There are so many free places that will help you get started. I mentioned a number of websites in a previous article. Click the highlighted link to find out more. I've lost 96 lbs by changing my ways.
Are you ready?
